“It is, though,” I say. “I knew he was married—”
“You were young,” he says. “You can’t help the way someone makes you feel. And he’s good, Isabelle. He makes everyone feel like that.”
“So, what happened next?” I ask, although I’m becoming increasingly confident that I don’t actually want to know. Waylon’s expression confirms it: the way his shoulders tense, his lower lip quivers before he bites it, hard. I watch as his eyes grow damp and distant, and he pulls his hand from mine, wiping them angrily, before returning his focus on me.
“She got pregnant,” he says at last. “And then a couple of weeks later, she died.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I can still feel it: the stick of the tile against my thighs. The sweat on my fingertips as I gripped the toilet, and the vomit in my hair, tangling the strands together like gum. My back against the wall as I sat on the bathroom floor, alone, staring as those two pink lines appeared in my hand. They were faint enough to make me question it—I remember tilting my head, squinting, like it was some kind of mirage that might disappear with just the right angle—but I knew, in my gut, that they were there. That this was real.
And then that single, fleeting second of regret.
The truth was, nothing about our life had panned out the way I thought it would. Ben and I weren’t the same people we were when we’d met—at least, I wasn’t. Not anymore. Making a baby together had felt like a final attempt at making it work, a last-ditch effort to turn it all around, and while I know now how crazy that sounds, finding your life unraveling like that makes you feel pretty desperate to weave it into something beautiful and whole before it disappears altogether and leaves you with nothing.
After all, I had given up so much for him. Losing him, too, would have felt like losing everything.
But sitting there on the tile with that test in my hand made it truly sink in: the reality of what I had done. The reality of forever with Ben—of another human being tying us together for eternity. The possibility that it might not change things for the better—and in fact, it might make it all worse. Those were the thoughts racing through my mind during that single second, and I wonder now if that’s how Allison felt when she found out, too: trapped. Trapped in her house, in her marriage, and now, in her own body. That one, final thing that was snatched away from her and claimed by somebody else.
Or maybe she was elated. Maybe she thought it would be a fresh start. Maybe she pushed down the bad thoughts like another bout of nausea, swallowing their putrid taste and plastering on a smile. Hoping that their problems might finally be solved.
“Allison never would have overdosed pregnant,” Waylon says now, eyes quivering. “She never would have done that.”
“Are you sure she knew?” I ask. “Nobody at the office knew.”
“She knew. She told us. It was really early, but she was the most open person on the planet. She could never keep a secret.”
I remember her hand on my arm, her lips on my ear. The whip of the wind on that rooftop and the combination of all three making my skin crawl like something had burrowed beneath it.
“To be quite honest, this dress squeezes me in all the wrong places.”
I remember how she had been carrying a flute around the rooftop, but her breath smelled like mouthwash instead of champagne; how her fingers rested gently on her stomach, as if she wanted me to know. She wanted someone to know.
“Waylon, I hate to say this…” I trail off, wondering how to word this delicately. “She was clearly struggling, maybe unable to think straight—”
“She wouldn’t have done it, Isabelle.”
I pinch my lips, nod, and think of my mother. I think of how she wouldn’t have done what she did, either. Not if somebody had been there to help. Not if somebody had listened. Nobody understands what it’s like to be locked inside the mind of a mother: the things you think that you aren’t supposed to; the beliefs that burrow themselves deep into your brain like a parasite, making you sick.
But at the same time, I can’t help but wonder.
All those years, I thought Allison’s death had saved Ben from making a choice—a choice between us two—but now I realize something that should have been obvious: Since when did Ben ever sit back and let life happen to him? Since when was he ever not in control? Ben didn’t do that. He never left things to chance; he never played a passive role in his own life, the way he expected us to. So maybe he was making a choice—maybe, in the end, his choice was going to be me. But then Allison had called him into the bathroom one day, the same way I tried to five years later. She had showed him the test and wrapped her arms around his neck, squeezing, and he’d had the realization that he was stuck, too.